xiii, 750 pages : 25 cm

Unpurified drinking water, improper use of antibiotics, local warfare, massive refugee migration have contributed to changing social and environmental conditions around the world. These have fostered the spread of new and potentially devastating viruses and diseases : HIV, Lassa, Ebola, and others. The author takes the reader on a fifty year journey through the world's battles with microbes and examines the worldwide conditions that have culminated in recurrent outbreaks of newly discovered diseases, epidemics of diseases migrating to new areas, and mutated old diseases that are no longer curable

Includes bibliographical references and index

Introduction -- Machupo: Bolivian hemorrhagic fever -- Health transition : the age of optimism, setting out to eradicate disease -- Monkey kidneys and the ebbing tides: Marburg virus, yellow fever, and the Brazilian meningitis epidemic -- Into the woods: lassa fever -- Yambuku: Ebola -- The American bicentennial: swine flu and Legionnaires' Disease -- N'zara: lassa, ebola, and the developing world's economic and social policies -- Revolution: genetic engineering and the discovery of oncogenes -- Microbe Magnets: urban centers of disease -- Distant thunder: sexually transmitted diseases and injecting drug users -- Hatari: vinidogodogo (danger: a very little thing): the origins of AIDS -- Feminine hygiene (as debated, mostly, by men): toxic shock syndrome -- The revenge of the germs, or just keep inventing new drugs: drug-resistant bacteria, viruses, and parasites -- Thirdworldization: the interactions of poverty, poor housing, and social despair with disease -- All in good haste: hantaviruses in America -- Nature and homo sapiens: seal plague, cholera, global warming, biodiversity, and the microbial soup -- Searching for solutions: preparedness, surveillance, and the new understanding -- Afterword

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